The Serious Fraud Office has searched the offices of an oil company chaired by
Lord Howard of Lympne, the former Conservative Party leader and home
secretary.
The central London offices of Soma Oil & Gas were visited early on
Wednesday by the SFO and other law enforcement officials.
Soma, which is backed by Alexander Djaparidze, a Russian billionaire, was
established to find oil in Somalia. In 2013 the oil company secured an
18-month deal to conduct seismic surveys in Somalia and its territorial
waters. The deal also allowed Soma to “nominate and obtain” exploration and
drilling rights.
Soma has since signed a further “capacity building agreement” to assist the
ministry of petroleum and mineral resources to “put in place the necessary
resources to manage the seismic data”. In total Soma is believed to have
invested more than $40 million in Somalia.
A spokesman for Soma Oil & Gas said: “We can confirm that Soma has been
informed by the SFO that it is investigating an allegation that has been
made against the company. Soma is confident that there is no basis to the
allegation and it is co-operating fully with the SFO to answer its queries.
Soma has always conducted its activities in a completely lawful and ethical
manner and expects this matter to be resolved in the near future.
“The SFO has confirmed that no suspicion whatsoever attaches to Lord Howard
arising from the business of Soma Oil & Gas and his rol

Lloyds Banking Group’s bill for mis-sold payment protection insurance could exceed £16 billion within 18 months.
The taxpayer-backed bank said yesterday it had taken a £1.4 billion provision against PPI in the first half, taking the compensation pot to £13.4 billion, but warned it could have to increase the pool by £3 billion before the end of next year if complaints did not fall at the rate it expected.
Reporting financial results for the six months to the end of June, Lloyds said it made a statutory profit of £1.2 billion, a rise of 38 per cent on the same period in 2014, despite the cost of PPI mis-selling and a £660 million charge against the sale of its former TSB subsidiary to Sabadell.
Underlying profits excluding these and other costs were £4.38 billion, up 15 per cent, allowing Lloyds to declare a 0.75p interim dividend, its first distribution to investors since the govern

Call it summer madness or a long-overdue return to form, but the world of mergers and acquisitions went into overdrive in July.
Figures show that $442 billion of corporate deals were announced or completed worldwide last month, making it the second-strongest July since records began in 1980.
Data from Thomson Reuters also show that activity hit such a high — with 14 deals of over $5 billion — that July swooped into seventh place in the overall rankings of highest monthly deal values.
Thomson Reuters said that M&A deals in the healthcare, finance and retail sectors had been responsible for more than 50 per cent of the action. Standouts include Teva’s hard-fought battle to win the generic drugs unit of Allergan in a $40.4 billion transaction and eBay’s $46.7 billion spin-off of PayPal, its payments processor.
Mergers in the global insurance sector also